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Twilight Reflections in the Hourglass

The director of Twilight Princess talks about the difficulty of following up the problematic Wind Waker.

Nintendo's Eiji Aonuma gave a presentation at the GDC yesterday which recounted events that in his eyes, lead to some rather large changes in the way Nintendo and himself thought about creating video games. Being the director of the recent smash hit The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess for the Nintendo Wii and GameCube is a great achievement, but as told by Aonuma himself, the road to completion was not an easy one.

The focus of the discussion surrounded a shift in Japanese gamers interest in gaming in general around 2004. He coined the phrase "gamer drift" which described the trend of the Japanese market losing interest in core game series' such as The Legend of Zelda. Aonuma's Wind Waker sold poorly in Japan, and the primary reason was the toon-shaded look of Link and the other characters. This apparently turned the gamers off.

Nintendo decided that a new philosophy was needed to breathe life into industry. The GameCube and GBA connectivity seemed to be a step in the right direction, but the problem with The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventure was that all four players needed a GBA each and a cable in order to get the most out of the game. This again turned out to be a turn-off.

Nintendo's Eiji Aonuma

During the development of FSA, a new Zelda project was also underway in the form of a sequel to Wind Waker. This would ultimately become the realistic Zelda game Twilight Princess. Miyamoto told Aonuma that in order to make a Zelda game that would break the gamer drift, the new game would have to let the player do things that they couldn't do in Ocarina of Time, and this trump the critically acclaimed N64 title.

An example of this was the ability for Link to ride his horse, Epona, and also be able to fight and defeat enemies in real-time at the same time. The trailer for Twilight Princess that debuted at E3 2004 received a standing ovation from the onlookers. The pressure was certainly on for Aonuma and Nintendo, because if this Zelda failed, it could spell the end of the series in the eyes of gamers.

2004 was the same year that the Nintendo DS hardware was shown at E3 also. The possibilities that this new hardware presented to developers and gamers were vast with the touch screen, and it could represent a way for the company to start getting past the gamer drift that was plaguing sales and interest levels. At this time, the FSA team started work on a new Zelda DS title -- which is of course Phantom Hourglass -- but Aonuma wanted to see if it could sport the same visual toon-shading as Wind Waker had done on the GameCube.